1. Field
Aspects of embodiments of the present invention are directed toward equalization in high-speed links through in-situ channel estimation.
2. Description of Related Art
High-speed serial links, such as fiber optic links, have extensive use in communication applications. An end-to-end channel for such a link includes: a transmitter; a communication medium, such as a fabricated link (e.g., fiber optic cable) or other transmitting medium (e.g., for transmitting radio waves) over which binary data (e.g., 1's and 0's, or +1's and −1's) is transmitted; and a receiver. An input stream d (corresponding to a message at the transmitting end) sent from the transmitter over the communication medium and received by the receiver as an output stream d′ may or may not be reconstructible at the receiving end to the original message, based on factors such as the amount of inter symbol interference (ISO introduced by the channel. Two ways of handling ISI are (1) using error correcting codes to encode the message (which build redundancy into the input stream d and allow the message to be reconstructed even when some of the ISI introduces errors into the output stream d′), and (2) using equalization to reduce the amount of ISI.